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Self-hosting paradox: Windows for specifically MS word (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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Hey Home-labbers/ self hosters.

This weekend my 10 year old processing machine finally bit the dust (RIP 🗿 💀 ; old system76 laptop, won't even post, not the topic of this thread but if you've got ideas, I'm all ears), and as part of figuring out what happened and coming to the realization its time for a new machine. And as part of getting/ pricing a new machine (not looking forward to the consequences of the RAM-pocalypse), I've been reviewing/ thinking about the "structure" of what we as a household currently use our self-hosted/ home-labbed system for.

Myself and my partner are researchers, and as such, we regularly collaborate/ work together on manuscripts, and the reality is, we rely on windows because we're also collaborating with other authors who also rely on MS word to write in. Now I'm a 100% FOSS advocate, but this is a sticking point my partner has had, and I agree with them, at least in practice that realistically, we need a windows machine laying around specifically for this one, particular use case.

Now my thinking here is to use proxmox to spin up a windows machine as a VM, something we can remote into. Is there any best practice for something like this? How would this work with licensing? I personally haven't installed windows on something since like windows 7, and I know they've enshittified beyond recognition.

I personally don't want windows on my machines. But realistically, I recognize its necessity for this one particular use case. Thoughts?

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[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

I would go with OnlyOffice, I've used it before and it seems to handle MS Office files a bit nicer than LibreOffice. I personally use LibreOffice, but it does sometimes burn me when an formatting issue pops up (worst example was a presentation where I set a partially transparent background image which MS somehow interpreted as making all the images transparent, ruining the legibility of the images!)

Someone has already suggested MS Office for web, but that a) requires a stable online connection and b) the web apps by Microsoft are, in a few words, complete ass. Everything loads ridiculously slowly, and formatting is inconsistent in my experience (think stuff like line spacing, font sizes). I really dislike editing on Word on Web, and in my old school, we used Microsoft Teams which just chugs and takes a good while to load anything. Why Microsoft can't figure out how to make a decently performing web app I have no idea.